1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for generating additive notes to commanded notes, and more particularly to a musical apparatus such as an electronic musical instrument capable of generating additive notes in harmony to the melody notes manually played on the keyboard to realize an automatic duet or trio or further polyphonic performance, and to a method conducted in such an apparatus and to a program and data storage medium for use in such an apparatus. Further specifically, the present invention relates to such an apparatus, a method and a storage medium which permit generation of harmony notes when the key touch strength for the melody note is greater than a predetermined threshold value or when the melody note is a constituent note of the accompaniment chord for the melody, thereby realizing a well harmonized polyphonic performance.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electronic musical instruments capable of generating additive notes are known in the art. In such a conventional electronic musical instrument, when the player depresses an intended key, the instrument generates a musical tone signal as designated by the depressed key and an additive tone signal of a note having a predetermined interval relation (harmonious relation) to the designated musical tone. Under the additive tone generating mode, the apparatus produces additive tones for all the depressed melody keys, respectively.
Such a conventional electronic musical instrument is disadvantageous in the following aspects:
a) An additive tone will be generated in a normal volume even for a weak tone as designated by a weak depression of a key, for example, by some erroneous play on the keyboard, which may cause unintended generation of an additive tone that may not necessarily be harmonious with the played tone. Musical mode or atmosphere may thus be deteriorated by such an unintended bothersome tone. PA1 b) An additive tone will be generated for every tone of the key depression during the performance under the additive tone generation mode, i.e. all the melody tones are accompanied by additive tones, which will be disadvantageous for presenting a musical performance having partial emphasis or a climax by generating additive tones at some intended part or parts in the melody progression. PA1 c) Even in case a chord accompaniment is given to a melody progression, an additive tone will be determined for every tone of the key depression in the melody progression irrespective of the chord progression, and this may cause the generation of additive tones which do not fit the chord under progression thereby deteriorating musical mode or atmosphere.